1. Field of the Invention
This invention is directed to a teaching aid, in general, and to an easy-to-use teaching aid for teaching mathematics to elementary school children, in particular.
2. Prior Art
There are many well known teaching aids available in the prior art. These include blackboards (with chalk), white boards (with magic markers), flannel cloths (with stick-on components), wood blocks, plastic blocks, magnetic blocks and foam-like blocks and/or shapes among many such products. Each of these teaching aids has advantages and disadvantages including cost, size, availability to teachers (or students) and the like. Some of these teaching aids are intimidating to students because of the size thereof (i.e. extremely large) and/or location thereof (i.e. in the front of the classroom). Some of these aids include heavy, difficult to use components.
It is always a desire by educators to be able to obtain and use teaching aids which are readily and easily used by students. It has been discovered that use of devices which are easily handled and manipulated by the teacher and the students enhances learning by, inter alia, encouraging participatory learning processes by the students.
Based upon this premise, it is highly desirable to utilize easily manipulatable, light weight, low cost teaching aids to increase learning traits of students--especially early elementary grade levels. The invention described herein is a highly successful example of such a teaching aid.